Ben Huh is keeping mum on Circa, his latest effort to reinvent journalism

Cheezburger Network founder Ben Huh has built an online comedy empire around silly photos of cats and people engaged in all kinds of weird situations. Now the Internet entrepreneur is turning his sights on a bigger problem: The state of online journalism.

In past interviews, Huh (who studied journalism at Northwestern University) has admitted to me just how difficult it is to run a news operation these days. But earlier this year, Huh decided to take a crack at that problem with the formation of the Moby Dick Project, a call to action to bring together “great minds” to discuss how news can be better presented to consumers.

Well, now Huh has found one of those great minds to form a company with. Matt Galligan — who just sold SimpleGeo to Portland’s Urban Airship — and Huh are the brains behind a new, for-profit venture called Circa.

Huh, who will remain CEO of Cheezburger, is serving on the board of Circa and advising the San Francisco upstart as it looks to raise $500,000 in cash.

“This was an idea born from my experience with Moby Dick,” Huh tells GeekWire. “But it really goes back to the orignal problems I had with news presentation. We’re essentially going back to square one and asking the question: ‘What if journalism and news was invented today?'”

Huh declined to offer more details about how Circa will work, and the launch date depends on the fundraising efforts by Galligan.

But Huh said he’s hopeful that the offerings developed by Circa will be employed by news sites such as GeekWire as part of the daily “news publishing and gathering process.”

Now, we’re even more intrigued.

John Cook is GeekWire's co-founder and editor, a veteran reporter and the longest-serving journalist on the Pacific Northwest tech startup beat. Follow him @johnhcook and email john@geekwire.com.